1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the protective packaging systems and apparatuses therein, and more particularly to a creating a cushioned packaging apparatus preform for protectively accommodating fragile items often associated with electronic equipment, especially during post-manufacturing and transport, without the need for additional packing materials.
2. Description of Related Art
It is known that one way to protect electronic equipment (e.g., computer displays, electronic component boards, thin lead electronics, and the like) is to wrap or surround the equipment in packing foam, bubble wrap or polyurethane pellets before or concurrent with setting such equipment into a shipping container for transport. Other methods includes shipping these electronic components via parallelpiped cardboard containers, specially-molded containers or foam-injected boxing so as to minimize the movement of the equipment during transport. Unfortunately, each of these methods is only satisfactory in protecting the equipment during transport, and each have varied costs associated therewith.
Essentially, each method requires a time-consuming packaging or customization step for preparing and packing each equipment component for shipment, which in turn requires additional labor and adds additional costs (due to the packaging and shipping materials) to the overall equipment cost. In many cases, the packing container is quite oversized as compared to the physical construct of the equipment component to be shipped so as to permit all the various packing materials, needed for shipment, to also be set in place in the packing container. Often, due to the varied need for a plurality of the packing materials as well as the additional labor involvement associated with preparing and setting the packing materials, there also clearly exists an increased likelihood for error in a variety of aspects including the placement of these packing materials in the container and around the equipment component, the inclusion of an adequate amount of packing materials given the container size and equipment component size and value, and the care and handling of the equipment component during this preparatory aspect so as to attempt to mitigate the possibility of accidental breakage due, both before and during shipment, to human error.